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She tossed and rolled in the queen size bed, the covers tangled around her legs, and a sheen of sweat covering her body. With a stifled yelp, she sat straight up in bed, gasping for breath, her chest heaving as if she were drowning, her short-cropped blonde hair matted to her head. With a shaking hand she reached for the light on the nightstand, only to hit the glass of water and knock it, with a shattering of glass, to the floor.

"Crap", she muttered as she stood up, throwing the blankets back and finally finding the light, turning it on with a snap.

She went to the kitchen, to get a hand towel. When she came back, she mopped up the water, and then picked up the glass, studying the sharp pieces, turning one over in her hands when it caught the light. She winced once when it cut her finger, and then she grew fascinated by the large drops of the blood that dripped from her fingertips to the floor below.

She looks at the cut - something was moving inside it. She looks at the glass, and then she plunged it into the cut, gouging out, cutting deeper, revealing a black shiny skin under her flesh. She prodded it, but nothing happened. She continued to cut, blood running freely, splitting her arm, more black shiny material under the skin, like chitin on an insect.

When she reached her face, she screamed, once.

She sat up in bed, screaming, reaching for her face, finding no blood, her arm intact, her breath heaving as she tried to stop screaming into the darkness. She reached for the light, and screamed again, when the bottle of water on the bedside table fell, clattering to the floor.

Gabriella sat for the longest time, staring at the pool of water spreading across the floor, afraid to get out of bed, and even more afraid to go back to sleep.

Faylinna rushes back into the bedroom from the bathroom when she hears the screaming. With a gesture the water bottle lifts up and deposits itself in the waste basket. The water itself if not a hazzard, so is left alone. Linna slips into the bed and moves to wrap her arms around Gabby. "It's alright, luv."

Gabriella flinched away from the contact at first, and then she buried herself into Fay's arms, sobbing out incoherent words that seemed to have no meaning, her entire body shaking uncontrollably. She seemed to want nothing more than to hide herself.

She felt herself being rocked, but she couldn't quite feel it. Even years later she would never quite be able to describe the feeling of what happened next. It was as if something had reached inside of her and pushed her off to one side. She became an observer in her own mind, beating against the walls of a prison that she could not see or touch.

The creature that lived inside her uttered a guttural snarl and scooted back from Faylinna, as if burned by the contact with her. The eyes in Gabriella's face were wild, and instead of her normal ice blue they burned with a baleful green light.

Faylinna frowns and reaches with her own mind, her own abilities. Knowing better than to try to contain the thing within Gabby mentally, she knows she can at least immobolize her lover's body to keep the thing from hurting Gabby, or using Gabby's body to hurt anyone else. So, a carefully constructed force field encases the woman's body. It's flexible enough that thrashing against it won't hurt Gabby, but the thing within isn't using its chosen vessel to go anywhere. "Tori, get my phone," Linna mutters through clenched teeth. "Call X, tell her Fay says we're on our way."

Victoria drops the frying pan, clearly in shock, causing her to process Linna's request alittle slower then usual, but then with a blink and a dumbfounded nod, she rushes to retrieve Linna's cell phone and returns, with it already at her ear, listening impatiently as it rings...

The creature snarled and jerked, trying to find a way to split open the shell containing its vessel. When that failed to work it began to exert it's mystical influence, a deep greenish glow that began at her hands and pushed against the shell. Flashes of green light exploded from the hands, and flowed up the arms. Its eyes glowed vivid green, and an eerie scream started in its throat, as if it might shatter the glass in the room with the mere vibrations.

"Release me nephalim, and I will spare you and your companion. Release me, or I will tear this vessel to shreds."

The threat may have been empty, but then again, who could say what a demon would or wouldn't do.

Gabriella gathered herself, deep within the prison of her own mind, and threw her will against the shackles binding her out of the way, but they held fast. She tried again, and again, straining against them with all of her soul and power, but all to no avail. In the end, she slumped back, wearied, but watching. She knew her chance would come.